Patriarch and Pope

September 29 2015

The Orthodox hierarchy was never ready to acknowledge the Papal supremacy in matters of discipline or of doctrine even when it was in desperate need of support against the East Roman Imperial Power. In the last resort the Orthodox hierarchy preferred the political yoke of an Emperor to the ecclesiastical yoke of a Pope if it was driven to make a choice between the two servitudes. On the other hand the Basilian monks, who had no hierarchical considerations to deter them, did not hesitate to place themselves under the banner of the Pope in their struggle against the Iconoclast East Roman Emperors.

A Study of History, Vol IV, OUP, 1939 (footnote)

This entry was posted on September 29 2015 at 10:06 am and is filed under Christianity, Greece.